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For Christine Salem Music Is More Than Just Art – It’S a Direct Connection to the Spirits of Her Ancestors

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For Christine Salem Music Is More Than Just Art – It’S a Direct Connection to the Spirits of Her Ancestors ° CHRISTINE S ALEM° For Christine Salem music is more than just art – it’s a direct connection to the spirits of her ancestors. Jane Cornwell speaks to La Réunion’s rising maloya star PHOTO J NOEL ENILORAC hristine Salem was 12-years-old when the djinns paid their first the world. It was through Danyèl Waro that Salem met Philippe Conrath, visit. A friend’s mother, a priestess at the servis kabaré whose Cobalt label releases music by both artists, and who in 2002 ceremonies linked to maloya, the rich percussive music of arranged for Salem to play European gigs including a showcase at C Réunion Island, saw something in this dark-eyed girl that felt WOMEX that kick-started several years’ worth of touring and recording. ancient, other. So she put her in a trance and brought it out. “The spirits Salem kept up her day job as a social worker and summer camp leader came through me,” says the 30-something composer and performer, sitting right up until October last year, when burgeoning musical stardom poolside at a hotel on her beloved La Réunion, an island off the east coast of prompted by performances at the likes of the Australasian Worldwide Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. “I started singing words I didn’t know,” she Music Expo forced her hand. Social work kept her grounded; she saw adds in her self-contained way. “I began writing in Arabic.” something of herself in the free-spirited kids of Saint Denis, the island’s She fetches a black notebook from her bag and shows me pages filled capital, where she grew up learning music in the streets of the ramshackle with cursive script she had written automatically, right to left, usually in the Camellias neighbourhood and playing defence in her local football team. middle of the night. Certain words repeat themselves: love, peace, wisdom. The second youngest of five sports-mad children, she heard that her father None of this would be very remarkable had Salem not grown up speaking was an accordion player. “I can’t be sure,” she says. “I never knew him.” only French and Creole. Until that childhood trance, she knew nothing of Singing made her feel good, so she took workshops in gospel and Arabic or the other languages that mix and mingle in this ‘overseas American pop, fell in love with the blues of John Lee Hooker, the doo-wop department’ of France, an 11-hour flight from Paris. of the Platters and the soul of Otis Redding. At school she studied French Today Salem’s shows find her singing in a hybrid language, a blend of history: “I didn’t understand why I was learning about white people in Malagasy, Comorian, Swahili and Creole (itself a mix of the languages that Europe when I had black skin and lived on La Réunion.” She shrugs. “The have shaped the island). And all while wielding a hefty kayamb reed shaker, school curriculum has only just started to include the history of Réunion. which she plays by twisting her upper body from her hips as she croons and But I’ve always had a lot of questions about my origins.” chants in her potent contralto, or calls-and-responds with her singing After a stint in a hotel band Salem turned her attention to maloya. In percussionists, David Abrousse and Harry Perigoné. 1997 she founded her own outfit, Salem Tradition, and made several “Réunion is a melting pot,” says Salem. In 2009 she set about researching records that explored the paths of tradition – “the instruments we play in the languages and forms linked to maloya, which is a tradition rooted in the maloya are found all over the Indian Ocean” – while keeping a foot in the work songs of the slaves who were taken from East Africa and Madagascar. present. She reconnected with her ancestors in servis kabarés and in The genre was banned until the 60s for its connection to Creole culture and concert where, depending on the room, the audience and her state of mind, performances of some groups with links to the Réunion Communist Party she can still fall into a trance without warning. “Christine, when onstage, were banned until 1981. “Everyone understands different traditions doesn’t fake it,” says Tom Puéchavy of the band Moriarty, Salem’s long-time according to where they come from,” she says. “Practices that used to be musical soulmates who feature on her current CD, Salem Tradition. “I was hidden are now more open. Thirty years ago, if people played the music of watching her play a little venue in France back in 2002 when she snapped,” servis kabaré in the street, their instruments were broken or burned.” says Puéchavy. “Her eyes rolled and for about ten seconds she was no longer Having endured generations of repression, maloya is now officially connected to her musicians and the crowd but to something else.” recognised by UNESCO as an Intangible Cultural Heritage and is the main But it wasn’t until five years ago, when Salem embarked on the project expression of the identity of Réunion at a cultural and musical level. Maloya Razinaz (Roots) and began visiting the regions of her ancestors and writing runs like a golden thread through the four-day Sakifo festival in the music based on the rhythms played during ceremonies in Madagascar, southwest coastal town of Saint-Pierre. There is electro maloya from Comoros and Zanzibar as well as in Réunion, that she finally felt comfortable Nathalie Nathiembé, whose dynamic support slot on the opening night with who she is and what she can do. “It was fantastic meeting people who eclipsed that of headliner Manu Chao. There are also maloya rap, maloya do the same thing as me,” says Salem, who met with ethnomusicologists and rock and malogué, or maloya-reggae. Sakifo’s dedicated maloya hut, a local women’s groups and backpacked around by herself. A research trip to palm-thatched affair with tongue-sizzling Creole food proved the place to Mozambique is in the works. “In trance, we all spoke the same language. We be. Performances-cum-jams led by the Pavarotti-sized singer Tiloun saw a communicate with the ancestors in the same way.” host of local artists joining in on instruments including the bob (musical If Salem’s mission to open Réunion maloya to the languages and forms of bow), pikér (bamboo log drums) and roulér (rum-barrel drums). its genealogy confuses some Creole-speaking maloya artists, then so be it. Tiloun’s silky vocals were cracking from overuse by early Sunday Salem is blazing her own path. Part Nina Simone, part shaman, her morning, when Sakifo’s free Risofé concert brought the denizens of Saint performance on the closing night of Sakifo drew a crowd that kept on Pierre out in force. This year’s host, 79-year-old maloya icon Firmin Viry, swelling; songs such as ‘Alouwe’ featured strong vocal melodies on a beat welcomed guests including Tiloun, Lindigo frontman Olivier Arasta and the that sped up into trance, with lyrics that seemed to call out to the ancestors. WOMEX award-winning Danyèl Waro, his former pupil, to the beachside A sudden wind bent palm trees, sending gusts of vanilla through the air. stage. Waro and Viry shared a hug before Waro stepped up to the mic to “You want the next big star?” the ancestors seemed to say. “Here she is.” sing – like everyone else – in Creole. “Danyèl is a poet, a protest singer and my role model,” says Salem of her elder, the man who introduced maloya to DATE Christine Salem will perform at WOMAD Charlton Park on July 28 46 Songlines August/September 2013 www.songlines.co.uk .
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